As an American and an avid wine enthusiast, the Prohibition Era will always fascinate me: I find it incredible, for one thing, that the Temperance movement could gather enough momentum to actually change the U.S. Constitution. Beyond that, I’m also amazed that Prohibition lasted nearly 14 years, and furthermore, I’m amazed that the Noble Experiment occurred within the last century. As someone who was born in the 1970s, it’s odd to consider that I only missed the Prohibition Era by about 50 years, or slightly less than two generations. As I’ve grown older, Prohibition somehow seems much less “distant” [... read more ...]
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The Culinary Timeline is a side-project that I've been working on since October. I'm hoping to have most of it complete by the end of January, with any luck. Until then, updates around here will be weekly, rather than twice weekly. Do stay tuned. • • •
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Lobster Russian Style: Garnished with hard-boiled eggs and black truffles, though the book allows black olives as a substitute for the latter. I meant to snap some food pics from Berkeley and the East Bay this week, but my camera battery was drained. Among the missed opportunities: a grilled bockwurst from Top Dog, a falafel pita from Fa-La-La, and a plate of yellow curried rice from Bua Luang. On the upside, I did find several great used cookbooks at Pegasus Books, including “Everyday French Cooking” by Henri-Paul Pellaprat. Originally published in America in 1966, Pellaprat’s book is an [... read more ...] If footnotes indicate anything, I’d argue that Susan Pinkard’s “A Revolution in Taste” is perhaps the best-researched text available on French culinary history. Pinkard has clearly done her homework, and her book is both comprehensive and concise, and for me, it represents one of the great recent surveys of food and culture. Published in 2009, “A Revolution in Taste” may prove a bit scholarly for the casual gourmet, but for the student of Western cuisine, the book offers an approachable and well-documented account of the culinary trends that evolved from the Greco-Roman Era to the French Revolution. Along the [... read more ...] What most Americans would recognize as “Chinese food” is far more likely to be Chinese-American, than anything truly Chinese. That said, it may seem surprising that there’s no chop suey or General Tso’s chicken in China, at least not as we know them. The staunch food-snob might label these Americanized dishes as a bastardization of the original form, although I feel that “bastardization” is much too strong of a term. Okay, if the food is served from a steam-table, then it probably is a bastardization. But whether it’s a buffet set-up or not, mom-and-pop Chinese restaurants outnumber McDonald’s franchises [... read more ...] "Gastronomical Map of China" as published in "The Chinese Festive Board." Click the image for more detail… Originally published in 1935, “The Chinese Festive Board” offers a brief-yet-comprehensive overview of Chinese cuisine, including etiquette, sample menus and an impressively extensive food glossary. The core of the book, however, is its collection of 50 recipes, which addresses the basic foundation of Chinese cookery. The specific edition of “The Chinese Festive Board” that I found was a sturdy paperback from 1985, published by Oxford Press Hong Kong, and featuring the pictogram map presented above (this clever line-drawing provides the design [... read more ...] I had ramen for lunch and dinner on Tuesday, as I meandered up the 101 from San Jose back to wine country. The first stop was at Santuoku in San Jose, followed a few hours later by Ramen Dojo in San Mateo. Both were very amazing, and very different bowls of soup. In between, I found this old copy of “Jim Beard’s Complete Cookbook for Entertaining,” published in 1954. It was $5 at B Street Books in San Mateo. Aside from its obvious connection to James Beard, I really admired the 1950s-era design of the book, especially the end-papers. [... read more ...] A few weeks ago, I found an odd little book titled “L’Art et Les Biscuits,” which features the historic advertising and marketing campaigns of Lefevre-Utile, the French biscuit company known as LU here in the United States (originally founded in Nantes in 1846, LU was purchased by Kraft Foods in 2007). “L’Art et Les Biscuits” captures LU in its heyday, documenting the company’s ad campaigns from 1897 to 1914, the same era that marked the Golden Age of French lithography. As one might expect, the lithography movement influenced a large portion of Lefevre-Utile’s advertising and packaging, and many [... read more ...] Having read and reviewed dozens of wine books since launching this blog back in 2008, I’ve become pretty up-to-date with most of the material available. As I’ve found, wine can be an endlessly scientific subject, yet at the same time, it can also become endlessly philosophical. With wine, there’s much to discuss, and as the world of wine continues to expand, the literature dedicated to this subject is bound to increase accordingly. For the true wine nerd, I’ve been mulling over my list of the “top 10″ most indispensable wine books, which I will divulge near the [... read more ...] Shoyu ramen with pork, spinach, and bamboo shoots. Living in the Napa Valley, I’ve long been searching for a decent bowl of ramen that doesn’t require a bridge toll. Unfortunately, there’s no realistic solution to this problem, so far as I can tell. For what it’s worth, I can at least find the Vietnamese counterpart to ramen at Pho #1 in Vallejo, which I also recommend wholeheartedly. But despite their superficial similarities, pho is not ramen, and the latter dish still requires a $5 trek across the Carquinez Bridge, if not the Golden Gate. I mention this fact [... read more ...] After a satisfying breakfast at the Brown Sugar Kitchen in West Oakland last week, I drove up to Black Oak Books on San Pablo, a place where I can always kill a couple hours by browsing their used cookbook section. I have a penchant for kooky old books that are long out-of-print, and when I had discovered an old copy of 1962′s “An Illustrated History of French Cuisine” by Christian Guy, I was hoping that the book would be filled with lots of great vintage illustrations, as the title seems to suggest. Unfortunately, this wasn’t really the case, at [... read more ...] |
 
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© 2012 The Accidental Wino |
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